Cooking a Grilled Cheese and Bellies and Love

I love cooking in my Airstream because I don’t really, uh, cook and I have to keep it simple in this small space. Yesterday I threw a whole bunch of asparagus and frozen peas and some olive oil and salt into the cast iron skillet and…sautéed (?) them until the pan started to smoke. I have a very soft-spoken fire alarm. She whispers when she thinks there’s danger, and I hate hearing her soft insistence that dinner, is not, in fact, doing just fine, so most of what I make is on the undercooked side. I don’t need some whispering ceiling girl telling me I fucked up when things are just, in fact, done.

Anyway.

Today, as I was making my grilled cheese, I got distracted for a minute and stepped away from the pan. When I returned, the smoke business was starting, and so I moved the sandwich to a greasier part of the pan with my fingers. And this burned.

I thought of my brother Sam who would basically use his hands as tongs or a spatula when he grilled or cooked on the stove. He’d worked in restaurants for years, so he was trained in burning his hands and not noticing. A week from today I’ll be in Maine at his memorial service. He died on March 18, and life has been titrating grief through my system. Just when I think I can’t bear it, my system lets up and gives me some happiness. Then, the next day or so, life lays a little more anguish on me. Okay, Love, life says. You felt that. Good job. Now here’s some more.

I am in awe of how much losing Sam hurts. I am in awe of my system for loving another human being this much. Isn’t it wild that we physically and mentally hurt when we lose someone or something? When you have someone who seems to be made out of plastic as your President, it’s even more remarkable at how real brotherhood and sisterhood are.

Sam loved to eat. He used to be skinny as a kid, and then he got a belly sometime in the last decade or so. I loved his belly. My little brother had a dad bod.

When I was pregnant with my daughter almost thirty years ago, the doctor told me I was gaining too much weight. I was too busy being shocked to be hurt. Was he not also in Texas with me? Did he not also see the turkey legs people gnawed on at the rodeos? Did he spend no time getting barbecue all over his face and hands? Did he not know I was creating life? Who gave a shit how much weight I was gaining? I was in the humongous state of Texas, and I was making a miracle!

I’d seen the frame of my carbon fiber bike bending as I rode to my appointment. I saw the size of my undies. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what was happening. I was pushing boundaries. I was growing. I was having a burrito for lunch and a burrito for dinner because that’s what my body wanted. My husband at the time loved watching me shovel down food because he was watching me feed our child. Eating was life, and we were making the most of our knives and forks in Houston.

The last time I saw Sam was in February. I’d rented a house in the town next to his for a month, and it was time for me to drive back to California. He’d been too busy to meet for most of the month because of work and all the snow he’d had to shovel or plow, but now I was going, he found some one-on-one time. We met in a bar that was between our houses. It was snowing yet again. We sat at the bar and I laughed at the specials. Chinese Chop Suey? I said. He looked hurt, as if the bar were a friend of his. (It probably was.) It’s comfort food, he said. I nodded. He knows I can flounce into Maine like a California asshole. Growing up in Massachusetts, I was a Masshole in Maine. I’m not sure what living in California makes me there. A dick, maybe. We decided to get some nachos. He got whiskey, I think, and I got a vodka tonic.

His face looked…bloated. I didn’t remember it being so hard to see his eyes.

After we ate and paid the bill, I felt the need to tell him how special I thought he was. How much I loved him. What a neat person he was. And then he said, “You always make me feel good about myself.”

I did not know that. What I did know is that he always made me feel good about myself because I was always so proud to have him as my brother.

“You are one of my most favorite people on the planet,” I said to him.

He told me he loved me. It’s so wild to love someone and have them be so familiar to you and still a stranger. There was so much for me to learn about Sam, always. We hugged in the snowy parking lot, and we got in our cars and drove away.

Twenty-two days later he died of a heart attack while snorkeling in Puerto Rico.

Eat the grilled cheese. Burn your fingers. Bend the frame of your bike. Cheer your beloved on as they eat.

And know that when you go, the people you leave behind are really, really going to miss you.